[Voice]

[herobydefault]

Tifa's gone home. Sorry to her friends here.


Filtered to KH!Cloud/50% Unhackable]

[A muffled attempt to start a sentence, and then he just forgets it and there's a dull sound as he switches to Private instead.]


[Private/50% Unhackable]

Can't even give us a minute to say goodbye, can you.

Comments

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Oh, so...gone-gone. [brb, trying to find composure!]

I'm...really sorry to hear that. Really, really sorry.

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

Don't apologize to me. I'll see her again. [Hopefully that "I'm sorry for YOU" is as in there as he thinks it is. Possibly not.]

[filtered]

[herotypical]

If...if you remember this place or anything about it when you go back--[again, there's that indomitable hope]--could you tell her thanks, from Buffy? For the cookies and for the...the everything.

[filtered] 1/2

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

No. Because we're gonna find our own way out of here, and we're gonna find a way to move back and forth between worlds. It's got to be possible, so the only thing left is find out how.

So you can tell her yourself when you see her.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

[Cloud's sudden--and apparently rare (although she only knows that through hearsay)--loquaciousness rattles the Slayer.]

You really think that's possible? I mean--I know it was, back home. Different dimensions and worlds and everything but...here? [Rattled? Sure, but still unconvinced.]

Still, it'd be nice to see her again.

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

Well, some of us end up here and then some of us go back. And sometimes we end up here again and remember. So there has to be a way to do it.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Back home, I knew brainy types who could probably figure it out--if they had the right books and the right resources. Neither of which seem too a-plenty here in crazy-land.

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

We know more than we did before. Maybe it doesn't seem like much, but...sometimes it takes more than a couple years to get out from behind the glass.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Years. [She is unimpressed with this verdict; Buffy sighs.]

How long had she been here, anyway?

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

...a year? She got here a little after I first did.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

[She takes the moment of silence to consider this. God, this was uncomfortable...people and their leaving.]

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[F-fff, silence. Which means it's his job to initiate conversation now.]

...anyway. [Fail, Cloud.]

[filtered]

[herotypical]

[A-actually? Despite the gross amounts of fail, Buffy is impressed. This grief-y Cloud is still a thousand times less rude and maybe two thousand times more talkative than the last and only time she spoke to him. So she'll make it easier for you. Or harder.]

Do you have any clue what's going to happen to the restaurant?

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

Not really. I'd offer to do it myself but I can't cook worth a damn.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Ditto, me. Plus the whole being the kind of girl who isn't really cut out for your typical nine-to-five job. But...it'd be a really shameful shame if it just stood there, unused. I betcha she won't like that.

[She is carefully avoiding any past-tense verbs, here. She is exceptionally worried about making this sound like a death rather than a departure.]

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

I can look around. See if anyone's willing to take it over as cook. I can...maybe be the bartender, and try to run it.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

It'd be fitting, I think, for it to be someone who--y'know--means something to her. A friend.

[Buffy has become mildly uncomfortable by this point. After all, Cloud had been a common conversation topic between the two young women. She was fast learning that it wasn't so easy to make the transition into conversing with that conversation topic.]

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Don't worry Buffy, Cloud has no idea he's a conversational topic.]

Mm. ...know anybody who can cook?

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Tifa was sorta my go-to girl for that sort of thing. She...she was gonna start teaching me. Little things, you know? Cookies and yummy simple things that I couldn't screw up too much.

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

...sorry.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

[The absurdity of it all makes her chuckle.]

Oh, God. Don't apologize. If anyone should be making apologies, it's the scientists in the invisible lab coats.

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

They'll regret making us their lab rats soon enough.

[filtered]

[herotypical]

Soon enough? You...sound like you're planning some kind of plan?

[filtered]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

No more than anyone else. But what goes around comes around, and we'll have our opportunity to meet them sooner or later. And they'll regret it, if they aren't regretting caging us up already.